


things you hold like truth upon the dead of night.

by peppermintcas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermintcas/pseuds/peppermintcas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your faith is built upon one fundamental concept: they will leave you, one by one. Soon. Perhaps not now, and perhaps not until later, but it’s there, looming in the distance. People leave you, because that’s who you are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things you hold like truth upon the dead of night.

The problem is not that you do not have faith; the problem is all that you put your faith in has withered away from your touch, has faded like shadows in the sun. You wonder, sometimes, if the drunken ramblings of a broken man are right—if, perhaps, your eyes ( _so much like your mother’s,_  your father slurs over a half-empty bottle of beer, _too much like your mother's_ ) are the ones to blame for her death.

One pillar of faith crumbles to dust and ashes at the age of four; you put your trust in another, a darker one, this one soaked in alcohol and stinking of regrets and anger and vengeance. Your father is on a mission. He will not stop at any cost to finish it.

Not even at the cost of his life.

Another pillar cracks; this one goes straight to Hell.

 

You know two things for certain, two things you hold like truth: one, your car is a constant, always there, always ready to spring up and leave. Two: so is your brother.

 

The Impala suddenly seems too heavy, too much a remnant of your father—you pick up a crowbar and smash the car to pieces. Glass shards spin through the air, a dangerous, sharp hail. One piece cuts into your arm. You don’t notice: your faith is slowly, slowly collapsing, crumbling at the pith.

 

You’re choking on the tang of blood in the air, clutching desperately at the back of his jacket. “Sammy,” you say. The pillar is swaying dangerously, blood leaking its way down towards its base, blood leaking its way down your wrist. “Sam?”

You grit your teeth and push your faith back into place as if it were an object you could fix. You are better with your hands than with belief, than with words; you lay Sam out on the bed, wipe away your tears like your father told you, and scrape a shallow hole at a crossroads of desperation. You cannot lose this pillar, this one pillar, the only one you have left—the roof, the weight of your burdens, will crash down on you if you do. Your guilt will crush you. If not that, the chronic alcoholism will.

Sam blinks and breathes and sits up, and you bury your head in his shoulder, and you try not to think about how the floor has started to fall away beneath your feet.

 

You are standing on the edge of an abyss—

You are falling.

There are knives and then there is pain and then there are monsters beyond measure, beyond humanity, beyond capacity. Your mind, fragile, can barely take it; it’s sapping your strength to say no each day. Hell is the torrent of fire, of ice cold water, that rages against the pillar of faith that is all you have left. You have nothing, it tells you, hissing into your ear with each stinging lash of Alastair's whip; there is nothing but the next slice of the blade.

You cry out. _No_ , you say through what remains of your gritted teeth. Go to Hell. Go the fuck to Hell.  _No_.

Alastair only grins, buries his scalpel into your shoulder, and leaves you in the all encompassing darkness.

 

Sometimes it’s not Alastair. Sometimes it’s your brother, with empty black eyes and a slack, grinning mouth— _no_ , you say, half delirious, _no,_ _Sammy, how could you,_ _why._

Sometimes it’s your father, slinging empty beer bottles, screaming at you in his old, drunken rage. _I told you to protect your brother, boy_ , he spits, and you want to cry out with pain as he drives a fist into your cheek, but that’s not what your father taught you, no. _Come on, boy. You’re weak._

Sometimes—on the worst days, on the days you nearly give in to Alastair’s manic smile and gleaming knife—sometimes it’s your mother, her nightgown ripped to bloody shreds and her eyes full of angry fire, flames licking around her heels and waist and hair. _Why did you kill me_ , she asks, haunting. She floats closer and reaches out, and you don’t know whether you want to lean in or back away. _Why did you kill me, Dean_ —

She touches you, and the fire scorches your bones.

 

A lesson: faith can not only be destroyed, but can be used against you.

Your faith, already worn ragged, burns to dust on the night that your mother ignites your skin.

 

It is dark. You know nothing but the dark. It should be a familiar, but it seems so stifling now, when you’re—

Alive.

You’re alive.

You fumble a lighter out of your pocket and flinch at the sudden light—you’re in a cramped position, laid out flat in an uncomfortable, splintery box. You shove upwards, years of training telling you not to panic. Take assessment. Tie your bandanna around your mouth and nose; breathe through your mouth. Shove, again. _There_ —

You drag in a gasping breath at the sun. Oh, the sun. Your body is stiff and hot and whole, and you have felt nothing like it since forty years ago, since the beginning of Hell. You take deep breaths. You begin to notice how thirsty you are.

You tie your jacket around your waist and walk, towards a distant, dusty pillar of faith.

 

The angel named Castiel stares at you, cocks his head slightly. He is in your space. His eyes pry into yours, unearth the rattling bits of insecurity that compose you.

“This is your problem, Dean,” he says, as if he knew— _anything_. You feel your lips twist in an angry scowl. “You have no faith.”

You know faith, see. You know faith, and you know betrayal, and you know the pain of building up that faith again, the painstaking work of carving it out, stronger, better. You know how hard it is to chip it into the shape of trust in the first place. You know faith. You have faith.

You don’t know how to keep it upright.

You grit your teeth and you don’t answer.

 

You manage to carve a pillar of faith for Castiel, after all.

 

Months later, it crumbles into a pool of black, inky water.

 

Castiel returns to you.

You don’t see it coming; your faith in him returns as suddenly as it disappeared, as suddenly as it was carved out in the first place, and it rights itself with a rattle that shakes your bones. It creaks, painfully, when he caresses Daphne’s hand, and you don’t flinch, and you don’t wonder why.

Your father trained you better than to do that.

 

Your faith is slowly, slowly, tipping into the river of Purgatory, leaning over the water, threatening to be swept away—

“I did it to—to keep them away from you,” Castiel says, his eyes flashing in anger, in righteous indignance, in slow, pervading fear. “That’s why I ran.”

Your lungs feel like they’re about to fucking riot, like they’re about to up and leave; your heart hammers with residual anger, and then with pounding relief. Castiel wasn't running from you. Cas was protecting you.

Cas will stay.

Your faith rights itself, settles back into its rightful place.

“We’re going home,” you say, and you mean it. He looks at you in surprise, looks away in guilt. “Cas, we’re going home.”

“Okay,” he says. His lips are pulling upwards in a resigned smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Okay.”

 

You build yourself upon pillars of trust, of faith; in your brother, in the home you’ve made of the bunker, in an angel. You prop these up against the weight of your sins, tell yourself that these people, these things, have stayed through it all, that you can’t be completely worthless, if you have them. They take some of the burden off your shoulders—Atlas didn’t have help holding up the sky, but you do. You have faith.

One day, you take a deep breath and let it go. You let the roof crumble.

The weight that always is precariously tipping on your shoulders: protect your brother. Take care of the car. Shoot first, ask questions later. Commands and training from your father, orders that have been carved into your mind. And then burdens you give yourself: take care of everyone you love, always. Don’t rely too much on faith: it’ll always leave you. Your worth is dependent upon how much your loved ones love you—which is to say, none—

You let it go.

Castiel’s hands are tracing over your shoulders, up your throat; they brush at your temples, bend your head down so he can kiss your forehead. His lips land on each of your eyelids, on the tip of your nose, on your cheeks. On the corner of your mouth, feather light. And then finally—you meet him halfway, and when he whispers _I love you_ 's into your skin, when he’s gasping your name into your mouth, when he’s falling with you—you let go.

He kisses the tears that trickle from your eyes and whispers declarations of adoration into your hair, and you kiss his shoulder and his chest and the hollow of his throat and your bury yourself in him and you are free. Your faith in him, in all of them, is unwavering, and you don’t need pillars to hold the weight off your chest anymore, because you have let the roof go, you’ve let it float away, and it feels amazing. It feels fucking great.

 

Your faith is built upon one fundamental concept: they will leave you, one by one. Soon. Perhaps not now, and perhaps not until later, but it’s there, looming in the distance. People leave you, because that’s who you are.

You twine your fingers with Castiel’s; you sling an arm over your brother’s shoulder, and you let that looming cloud blow to dust.

**Author's Note:**

> i think 1.5k at three am is my newest record. amazing. *high fives self* *collapses into bed*


End file.
